


The Locket

by mollymauks



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, PTSD, Post episode 5, and i intend to exploit that for all it's worth, but their friendship is really important to me???, lots of fun stuff going on here, molly was messed up and i had to play with it, more tags are gonna be added to this as we go on Molly has a fucked up backstory, post alfield battle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-03-19 06:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13698516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollymauks/pseuds/mollymauks
Summary: Molly has no memories of his past before he woke up at the side of the road, half-dead, and was taken in by the carnival that became his family.The only connection he has to who he was before is a locket given to him by Yasha. Now travelling with his new, strange group, he begins to understand who he was before, and is forced to face the ghosts that emerge from the locket he opened with unthinking curiosity.Mollymauk backstory/character study/exploration of the new team dynamic. Something in here for everyone. And shit loads of angst. Because I'm me.





	1. In The Quiet Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 Summary:   
> Post episode 5/the battle of Alfield, Molly is still struggling and can’t sleep. He retreats to the common room of the inn not wanting to stay in the shared room and a friend arrives in the early hours of the morning to offer some advice and comfort. 
> 
> 'On the brink of lashing out and driving his fist into the table just to have something to do with the boiling energy that had no outlet, he found himself stopped by Yasha’s hand settling gently, tentatively, on top of his.'

Molly tossed another log onto the dying fire in the common room of the Alfield in. The rough grain of the raw wood scrabbled at his fingers, but he barely noticed. A burst of bright gold sparks erupted from the embers as the fresh fuel struck them. He stared blankly into the pit, watching as the flames rose to gather the wood into their heart, engulfing it as they slowly rose higher and higher. He threw another log on then returned to his chair.

The inn had several squashy armchairs gathered around a small table next to the fire, and he had chosen a deep, winged one to settle himself in. It gathered him up in darkness as surely as the fire gathered up the logs he had fed it. Each consumed their prey.

He wasn’t sure which was the worse fate. To be consigned to the flames, to burn and be consumed by that roaring, raging inferno...Or to be swallowed by the silent darkness, as he was, to drown in it, without sight or sound, never truly knowing when death claimed him, for the oblivion felt so familiar it would probably feel more like coming home than truly dying.

It was late. Or maybe it was early. He had lost track of the time after his fourth (or was it fifth?) shot of the liquor the barkeep had given him. The rest of his strange little ragtag group, exhausted from the battle that day, had one-by-one fallen asleep in the room they’d been given in the Feed and Mead tavern.

Sleep had refused to claim him, however. He had sat there, nursing his drink, the sting of the liquor as it burned its way down his throat a perfect complement to the torrent of images and sounds that had ravaged his mind, not all of them from the horrors of the day.

All he’d had for company was the slow, soft breathing of his slumbering companions, the faint snuffling snores of Nott, curled in a ball beside Caleb. It had started to drive him mad. The steady, rhythmic sounds refusing to let him go, let him sleep, let him _breathe_.

In the end, he had snatched up the bottle the inn keep had given him, gotten to his feet, sheathed his swords at his back, having felt naked without them, and crept out of the room. None of his new...What were they? Travelling companions? No. Friends. He could call them friends. They had killed together more than once now, had saved each other’s lives. He figured that qualified them as friends.

They hadn’t stirred as he had left them, as unaware of his absence as they had been by his presence, and he slipped down the stairs like a ghost, cloaked in silence, shrouded in the haunted screams of his waking nightmares.

The common room had been quite empty, and quite silent, to his relief, and he had slumped down into the chair he currently occupied, staring at the dying fire. He stared at it again now, as the flames reared like angry serpents from long grass, and imagined, for just a moment, stepping into them, letting them embrace him and carry him off to the nine hells where he might finally get a shred of damn peace.

The shot glass in his hand exploded and he cursed savagely under his breath as blood began to bead on his palm. He hadn’t realised how tightly he’d been squeezing the glass and now...

Hissing in irritation, he got to his feet, cradling his bleeding hand against his chest, tail lashing furiously, he ducked behind the bar and managed to find a reasonably clean rag, which he used to quickly clean and then wrap his hand. The cuts weren’t deep, and would stop bleeding on their own if given a few minutes. One of the benefits of his lifestyle was that he was intimately familiar with the healing capabilities of his own body.

He slouched back to his chair and collapsed into it once more. He had just raised the bottle of liquor, which was still almost half-full, and promised an excellent night of fogged thoughts and slurred vision, fully intending to just drink of it in lieu of a glass, when the door to the tavern opened behind him.

Throwing the bottle back onto the table where it skidded before coming to a stop near the edge, he leapt to his feet, reflexively drawing his swords and settling into a ready stance, heart hammering in his chest.

He froze when he recognised the figure standing in the doorway. Tall, her pale skin glowing faintly as though illuminated by moonlight, though the cloudy sky obscured it, her hair fading from midnight black to the white haze of morning mist as it tumbled down past her shoulders.

“Yasha,” he muttered, sheathing the blades and striding over to her.

She looked mildly around the completely empty room, mismatched eyes taking in the bottle of liquor at his solitary table, before her gaze rested on him. Many people found that stare disquieting, but as a master of uncomfortable stares himself, with his two burning red eyes, Molly had never understood what all the fuss was about.

He didn’t embrace her, Yasha was not fond of being hugged, as they had all quickly learned when she joined the carnival, but she did permit him to grasp her forearm and squeeze gently. It was their compromised greeting, caught somewhere between Molly’s desire for a bear hug, and Yasha’s two-fingered handshake.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Molly commented, sauntering back to his table, retrieving his bottle, then throwing himself back into his chair.

Yasha paused a moment, then followed him, sitting herself down, with rather more grace, into the chair beside his.

Molly took a swig of the liquor and added, since Yasha hadn’t deigned to answer his first comment, “I thought you weren’t going to catch up to us until Zadash.”

“I wasn’t,” Yasha said quietly. Her gaze had found the flickering flames he’d been losing himself in for the past few hours as she spoke. “But as I was travelling I saw the fires burning here from the distance,” she turned and looked at Molly as she said, “Figured it was a pretty safe bet you’d be here.”

He snorted softly into his bottle at that, “Well you figured right, my dear, didn’t you. And now I have the pleasure of being graced by your company once more.” Yasha made no comment to that, just continued to watch him, quiet, thoughtful. “Your journey went well, I trust?” Molly pressed.

This was typically the way their conversations went. Molly talked, and talked, and then talked some more, and Yasha occasionally peppered his monologues with small comments here and there.

In the beginning, when he had understood how it felt to be new, the intruder in the established family group of the carnival, he had gone out of his way to find Yasha and speak with her, but her less than eloquent responses had him feeling he was bothering her, and he’d stopped. She’d come to him after a few days to ask quietly if she had done something wrong. He had realised then that she apparently liked these little conversations of theirs, one-sided as they often were, and he hadn’t made any effort to stop them after that.

“No-one bothered you, tried to rob the clothes off your back?”

She gave him a flat look that had him actually smiling. No-one would be stupid enough to bother Yasha. Even if she had been travelling alone. One look at her was typically enough to dissuade the intelligent folk of the world. And those that weren’t intelligent to be put-off by the mere look of her...Well, that was just natural selection at work, wasn’t it?

“The journey was fine,” Yasha said, quietly. Then, “What happened here?”

Dear Yasha, blunt and to the point as ever.

“I have missed you,” Molly told her frankly, leaning over and patting the top of her hand.

The woman was nothing if not straightforward. She disliked wasting time, as she saw it, on flowery speeches and the art of saying much while saying absolutely nothing, which he himself was so practiced at. If she had something to say she said it in as few words as possible and saved everyone time.

In many ways the two of them were complete opposites. He was ostentatious and flamboyant, he enjoyed being at he centre of things, and commanded attention as skilfully as a general commanded troops in battle. Yasha was much happier in the shadows, in the quiet pockets of calm that lingered on the edges of his chaos, like the shadows that always existed behind a fire. He lied and twisted and manipulated while she preferred to be honest and simple. What you saw with her was what you got. What you saw with him, well, that tended to vary by the hour, as did his mood.

Yet that had one single similarity that overcame all of their apparent differences. Both of them were lost in this world. Like ships with cut anchors set adrift, without purpose or place in the new world they found themselves in. They had connected because of that, and had found that, for the most part, their differences tended to complement one another.

Yasha raised her eyebrows to prompt him into answering her question and he sighed, “We lost. That’s what happened,” he said, then took another long drink. This stuff really wasn’t half bad.

Yasha eyed him for a long moment, but didn’t press him for details, for which he was grateful. He really _had_ missed her. It was inordinately refreshing to be around someone who didn’t feel the need to fill silences with empty drivel whenever anyone paused for more than a breath. Ironically, he reflected as he took another sip, that applied to none of them so much as it did him. But then he’d always been terrible at heeding his own advice.

When he emerged from his latest foray into this new experience, he found that Yasha was still eyeing him wordlessly. He was about to open his mouth to ask what was the problem, when she said softly, “What are you doing, Molly?”

He raised the bottle and gave it a little shake, “I had thought that was fairly obvious, dear,” he replied sardonically.

“It’s past three in the morning,” Yasha said, “You should be in bed.”

“As should you,” he replied, lightly, “And yet, here we are.”

“I was travelling and didn’t feel like sleeping in another field,” Yasha said shortly, “You look half-dead but you’re sitting here drinking instead of resting up.

Well she had a point there. Yasha remained silent, knowing he would fill the silence if it dragged on too long, damn her. Finally, he did indeed say, “I’m playing a game, you see.” She just blinked at him. He held up the bottle again and gave it a little shake so that the stuff inside it sloshed around, “We’re going to see who drowns first: my demons, or me.” He took yet another sip of the stuff, then leaned in conspiratorially and said, “My money’s on them.”

He must be starting to get drunk, if his tongue had become this loose. If he’d been with any of the others he might have guarded it better, might have stopped and gone to bed before he said something he’d regret more than the hangover he could already feel smacking him across the head tomorrow. But Yasha...Well, Yasha was Yasha, and the words spilled out anyway.

Yasha motioned for the bottle and he handed it over. She sniffed at it, then took a cautious sip and immediately pulled a face as she shoved it back towards him.

“I wouldn’t feed that to a dog,” she commented drily.

“I should hope not,” he replied, his tone mild, “It’d be a waste of a perfectly good liquor.”

She snorted softly at that, then abruptly got up and walked away from him. He assumed she was going to disappear upstairs to appropriate a room for herself, she did that, just got up and drifted away without warning or explanation whenever she felt like it. He was surprised, therefore, when she returned a second later with two glasses and a bottle of whisky she’d evidently swiped from behind the bar.

“You have to pay for that, you know,” he told her, as she pulled the stopper out with her teeth and poured out two glasses for each of them.

“I left a gold piece on the bar,” she replied, without looking at him.

He smiled faintly, of course she had. “You were always too good for us,” he said, taking another swig of his drink. He couldn’t really taste it anymore, and was fairly sure he wouldn’t be able to taste anything at all for another decade or so following this.

She shrugged and nudged the glass of whisky she’d just poured towards him, “If you’re going to drown,” she told him, “You might as well drown in something that doesn’t taste like it was made to strip paint off our old wagons.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Molly replied, tasting the whisky. His eyebrows lifted slightly, it was good stuff, he hadn’t known Yasha had it in her to choose something like this. “You never cease surprising me,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.

But she smiled, a soft, genuine thing, and said, “I try.”

They sat and drank in companionable silence for a long time, until Molly’s tongue loosened yet again, and he found himself saying  rather hoarsely, “I couldn’t sleep.”Yasha glanced towards him looking away from the fire which he was currently staring into, “That’s why I’m down here, that’s why I’m...” he trailed off and gestured vaguely towards the whisky and the bottle of teal liquor still on the table.

“Why?” Yasha asked quietly after a long beat of silence.

“Why _what_?” he snapped, rather more aggressively than he’d intended, but Yasha barely even seemed to notice the tone.

“Why can’t you sleep?” she said, her soft voice curiously gentle.

He stared at her for a long moment. He raised his glass to his lips...Then slowly set it down on the table again without drinking from it.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. Then, more loudly, “I don’t _know_. I don’t know why this has bothered me. I don’t know why my heart’s racing, why I can’t breathe, why my hands won’t stop _shaking_.”

He clenched them tightly into fists in an effort to stop them. It didn’t work any better now than it had three hours before when he’d been lying on the floor of their room trying to force himself to stop panicking and rest.

Yasha glanced down at his trembling hands, then back up at his face.

“They’ve been doing that since the battle ended,” he confessed, turning away from her and feeling a sharp stab of shame as he did so, which only stoked the frustration burning inside him that much higher for it.

On the brink of lashing out and driving his fist into the table just to have something to do with the boiling energy that had no outlet, he found himself stopped by Yasha’s hand settling gently, tentatively, on top of his. He blinked, shocked. This was the first time she had initiated any contact between them. Her pale skin was cold and her touch was oddly soothing and calming. For the first time, a faint tingle of peace threatened to wash through him.

He raised his head slowly and found her looking steadily at him, “It will stop,” she said softly.

“You say that like you know,” he said, and though he tried, though he hated himself for letting it slip, he couldn’t help the faint note of desperate pleading that coloured his words.

“I do,” Yasha replied, just as blunt and simple as she had always been, “It will stop.”

He stared at her for a long moment, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Finally, he pulled away from her touch and reached again for his glass of whisky. “And in the meantime,” he said, trying again to restore that light, casual, ‘couldn’t care less’ tone his voice was always tinted with.

Yasha, however, reached forwards and plucked the glass out of his hands before he could take another sip of it.

She set it down on the table again, still well within his reach, and said, “It doesn’t help.”

“On the contrary,” Molly replied, frowning at her, “I think it’s helping a great deal.”

“Really?” Yasha said, raising her eyebrows, “You’ve been drinking for what? Four hours? More? Have your hands stopped shaking? Can you sleep? Has it stopped? The feeling that...That you have to tear the whole world apart with your bare hands and it still won’t be enough. Has that gone away?”

This revelation, small as it was, was enough to quieten him. He knew enough about Yasha, about as much as she knew of him. He had guessed more, as she had guessed more about him, he was sure. They had lived in close confines, and worked together putting up tents and promoting the carnival together for over a year. You picked things up about people you spent that much time with, it wasn’t possible to avoid that. But in all that time she had never given him anything this...Intimate, this _vulnerable_ , before. And for once he shut his mouth and bit down on the sarcastic comment that rose on instinct.

“No,” he admitted finally, “It hasn’t.” His fingers twitched towards the glass again, but he didn’t touch it this time.

There was a long silence between them, in which Yasha stared into the fire, refusing to look at him. Finally he said softly, “I don’t know if I want to sleep for a week or if I want to go back out there and _fight_ again, just to have something to do with all this...All this-“ he broke off, unable to find the word, and gestured towards his chest with both hands instead.

Yasha nodded, understanding.

“And I don’t know why...Why they’re all _fine_ ,” he bit out. Now that he had started talking about this he didn’t seem able to stop. Yasha had always had that effect on him, and he on her, to a lesser extent. She was easy to talk to. She felt safe, that reservation, the silent air that clung to her made a person feel sure their secrets were safe with her.

“They’re not,” Yasha said quietly.

He snorted in derision, “They’re up there sleeping peacefully and I’m down here half-drowning myself in cheap liquor. I think there’s a very definite divide between ‘fine’ and ‘not fine’ in this little group right now, and it’s very clear which side we all belong on,” he snapped.

“They’re not fine,” Yasha repeated, “No-one can be ‘fine’ after something like that.” There was a weight to her words, a haunted heaviness in her eyes that stayed his tongue again. She knew. Perhaps better than he did. “It will come for them one day. Someone who spills blood for a living can only go so long before they start drowning in it. They can only lie to themselves for so long before it breaks something in them, and then they can’t go back. It will come for them, too. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but...It will come.”

He laughed bitterly at that and said, “So you’re saying I’m weaker than them? Because I broke sooner?”

Yasha looked at him, her mismatched gaze steady and penetrating. Then she said, “You’re not broken, Molly. You’ll know when you are.”

A chill shivered down his spine at that.

“Is that why you left home?” he found himself asking her, genuinely curious, “Did you break?”

“Something like that” she murmured softly.

“I thought it might have gotten easier,” he said, “The more you did it, the more you got used to it. I mean, if you’re going to break, it seems to make more sense that you’d break on your first battle than your fiftieth.”

Yasha just shook her head at that. “It never gets easier,” she said, that haunted weight returning to her words. “I was raised to this. I was trained by the best of our warriors from the moment I was old enough to understand. They put an axe in my hand before I learned to walk and I killed my first man when I was twelve.”

A faint thrill of shock flared through him at that, not just the words, but the fact that she was admitting it to him.

He stayed quiet. She was staring into the fire again, but he sensed that she wasn’t finished yet, and he had no desire to interrupt her.

“I still see him in my dreams,” she confessed quietly, one hand clenching into a fist on her lap. “I still feel the warmth of his blood on my hands after I cut him. I still...I still hear him scream in the quiet hours, that time where my people would say the world would hold its breath, where everything stopped, and there was no-one to save you from yourself but you.” She looked up at him, her words faint and shaking slightly, but her gaze quite steady, and said, “Anyone who tells you it gets easier is either lying, to you, to themselves, it doesn’t matter, or they’ve never experienced anything like this.”

Molly watched her and for the first time, though she remained tall, and muscular, and imposing, he saw a quiet, frightened child in her eyes, haunted by the things she had done. He reached out to her and took her hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quietly but sincerely.

Yasha nodded and faintly squeezed his hand in return.

“I hear screams in the quiet hours, too,” he admitted softly, now taking his turn at staring into the fire and avoiding her eyes. “But they aren’t from today. They’re from before.”  

 _Before_ that word that meant so much to him, and yet at the same time meant nothing at all. Before he had met Yasha. Before the carnival had found him. Before when he had still _had_ a before.

Yasha stiffened slightly at the mention of it. He had never addressed it explicitly with her, with any of them, but they had all known. Now he had his lies ready. He had a million stories about who he might have been, what he might have done, what he could have achieved. He fed them to people, carefully keeping track of who he had told what, making a game of it. How many lies could he tell? What could he make people believe? What could he make _himself_ believe...

But with the carnival...He hadn’t had the wherewithal to invent those first few months, and it soon became clear when a man had no history, had no...Nothing. No-one could pretend to be that empty, could erase their history that completely from those they lived with, not even Yasha. She knew. They all had.

“I don’t understand,” he admitted softly, “I don’t know if I’m the one who caused those screams...or if I’m the one screaming. I don’t know what I might have done, or what might have been done to me I...I don’t _know_ , Yasha.” He looked up at her and found her watching him with a carefully guarded expression he couldn’t read. “I don’t know who I am.”

“Yes you do,” she said, softly. “And I know, too. You’re Mollymauk. You’re my friend. You’re a good man...Even if you’re a bastard sometimes,” she amended, and his lips twitched up into a smile. “You know who you are, you’re just...not so sure who you were.”

He smiled sadly at that. “Who we are is informed by who we were, Yasha. No-one exists in a moment.  We’re all a patchwork of our experiences, our loves, our losses, our _lives_. And I don’t have that.” He trailed off, lifting his chin slightly, watching the smoke that coiled up the chimney, blackening the walls around it. 

He fiddled aimlessly with a loose thread at the cuff of his cloak, and made a note to address it later. Then he said, “I told myself I didn’t need to know. I told myself I could simply build from where I was, simply become who I would become, and that the past didn’t matter. But now...I don’t think that’s something I can do.”

Yasha studied him for a long moment, then said, “I’ve spent the last three years running from my past, from who I was, from what they tried to make me become.” Her eyes once more bore that haunted cast, and he believed her, believed that she would run through each of the nine hells to get away from whatever it was that tormented her. “You’re free, now. What you were, what you might have done...It can’t hurt you, now. Knowing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Being empty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either,” he replied with a twisted smile. “At least you know what you might have been, and that you don’t want that, and you can make the choice to become anything other than that. And if you’re running from something, you’re also running to something in a way. Even if it’s just anything that’s not what you once had, it’s something. It’s purpose. I have nothing, Yasha. Nothing.”

 She made no answer to that, so he continued, “You have a choice. To run, or to stay, to become what you were made or what you want. Even if it’s an easy choice, no real choice at all, it’s something. That’s all I want he said, shaking his head. I want a choice. I need that. I need _something_. I need to know, to understand.”

Yasha is quiet for a long time, staring at him, apparently deep in thought. Finally, she reached into a pouch around her belt and fished out a small golden something dangling from a chain. She hesitated a moment, then slid it towards him.

He caught it up in long, dextrous fingers and examined it. It was a small golden locket, perfectly round, and about the size of a gold piece. The front was carved with intricate, interlocking shapes that looked like strange gears.

“I did go back to see Orna before I left,” Yasha told him quietly as he continued to gaze at the necklace she had given him. “She gave me that and said I should pass it on to you.” He looked at her sharply as shrugged and said, “If you really want to try and find out about your past, maybe you can start there.”

On that mysterious note she finished the rest of her drink, then rose to her feet and drifted off towards the distant stairs without another word, leaving him sitting alone by the fire again.

He stared down at the locket then, gently, flipped open the clasp and opened it. He stared down at what it contained for a long time, committing every intimate detail of it to memory. Then, slowly, he got to his feet, slipped the locket around his neck and tucked it down the front of his shirt, then followed Yasha upstairs, leaving the fire to burn itself into embers once more in his wake.


	2. Family Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new family that's blossoming around Molly starts to discuss their old family. Mostly team fluff and bonding.

It didn’t take them long to get onto the subject of their families.

It was inevitable, really. They were six, occasionally seven, whenever Yasha drifted back to join them, travellers in a wagon with a single horse which was, miraculously, still alive. There were only so many times they could listen to jester half-shriek, half-sing, without a single hit note anywhere to be found, the same sailor’s songs Fjord had taught her before the desperation to avoid yet another rendition of it drove them all into small talk.

Molly was taking his turn lounging in the back of the wagon with Jester, his head resting idly in her lap, allowing her to comb her fingers through it and braid it. This inevitably meant it getting knotted so badly Beau had offered to cut it off with a dagger to salvage it, but he had managed to untangle it all so far.

Fjord started it, turning to Beau as Jester began humming a very familiar tune that struck fear into the hearts of all those around her, and said with an air of thinly concealed desperation, “So, this _vacation_ you’re on right now. Your folks okay with it, are they?”

She narrowed her eyes at him in that way she did. Molly lazily turned his head to get a better view- only to have Jester give him a good idea what it felt like to be the horse as she yanked on his hair like reins, “Stay still,” she huffed at him, “You’re making it more difficult to create my masterpiece.”

Choosing to pass over the ominous use of the word ‘masterpiece’ he instead fished another few mint leaves out of the pouch at his belt and began chewing them.

He had found a small clump of fresh mint the other day and had eagerly picked it. Over the course of their travels he had managed to persuade most of the others to try some.

Fjord had shrugged noncommittally, claiming not to be offended by it, but also not really sure why anyone would bother chewing it.

 Beau had glowered at him as though he’d offered her freshly picked hemlock instead and refused to put it anywhere near her mouth.

Jester had liked it so much she requested more. Which she had promptly sprinkled all over the top of one of her doughnuts in order to make it ‘mint flavoured.’ She was a strange soul, but Molly wasn’t one to judge.

Caleb, apparently already used to the practice, had taken some without needing to be urged and thanked him for it.

He had also helped coax Nott into trying some.  The leaves had remained in her mouth for all of twenty seconds before she spat them out and scrubbed at her tongue with her fingers, looking disgusted.

“Yeah, they were cool with it,” Beau said, shrugging, “No big deal.”

Molly, recognising the tone by now, absently riffled through the deck of cards that were rarely out of his hands, and threw one at her like a glaive. Happily, her attention was focused on Fjord, and so it hit her in the side of the head. She snatched at it before it fell and whirled on him, torn between staring down at it.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she demanded, brandishing it at him.

Above him, Jester cried eagerly, “Oh me! Let me see it! I will reveal the secret message it conceals!”

Abandoning the ‘masterpiece’ of Molly’s hair, she crawled to the edge of the wagon and took the card from Beau. She stared down at it for almost a full minute then burst out laughing, with such a loud shriek that the horse snorted, lashing its tail, startled by the sudden noise. Caleb quieted it with a gentle touch to the neck while Jester rolled around the bottom of the wagon, clutching her stomach.

“ _What_?” Beau demanded, glaring at Molly  who just offered her a soft smile, and hastily pulled his legs up against his chest to avoid the retaliatory whack from her staff.

Controlling herself with difficulty, Jester sat up again, holding the card before her as though she was about to bless someone with it, she announced, “It means that you’re _lying_.”

Molly plucked the card from Jester’s fingers and deftly slotted it back into the deck as Beau fumed, “I am not.”

“Oh but you are,” Molly said, grinning at her upside down from where Jester had yanked his head by the horns back into her lap so she could continue playing with her hair, “You’re lying through your teeth, and you’re doing a very poor job of it, I must say.”

“My parents _don’t_ care that I’ve gone on this trip!” she burst out, as though increasing her volume would make them less likely to see through her bullshit.

“Mm, that’s closer, but still not _quite_ the truth, is it?” Molly said, smiling at her.

“You better shut your mouth so I can’t see those teeth of yours any more or I swear I’ll knock them down your throat, ”Beau snarled at him, starting forward before being restrained by Fjord’s gentle hand on her shoulder.

In response, Molly bared his fangs at her. She growled.

“What are you trying to say, Mollymauk?” Caleb asked, frowning slightly at him from where he was up front walking the horse.

Nott was currently sitting on its back, occasionally accepting the flowers Caleb passed to her from the side of the road. The first time she had tried this the horse had nearly bolted and left them alone in the wilderness. But by now, as with so many other things, the poor beast seemed just resigned to its fate. Molly was fairly certain it was counting down the days to Winter’s Crest with eagerness. Though he doubted Jester would ever actually let him butcher and eat it.

“You come from money, yes?” He shot at Beau. It was a rhetorical question, but she grunted vaguely in a way that meant ‘yes’. “Girls like you that come from money like that aren’t generally allowed to wander the countryside wherever they will. Maybe your parents truly don’t care, I know I certainly wouldn’t-“ she made a rude hand gesture towards him, and he responded with one of his own, “But my guess is they have no idea you’re taking this little tour of the world.”

Beau flushed red at that and Molly smirked, popping another mint leaf into his mouth and feeling satisfied.

“Uh, what about siblings?” Caleb interjected as Beau clenched her fists tightly and glared in Molly’s direction. It was a very obvious attempt at defusing the situation, but it was curiously difficult to deny the awkward wizard anything. “Brothers? Sisters?”

“What about them?” Beau muttered, looking away from Molly.

“Well, do you have any? Don’t they miss you being away from home for so long?” Caleb asked.

Molly cracked an eye open to peer at Beau. She had gone curiously quiet, as though all the rage and fight that had been blazing through her only a moment before was gone. “Got a sister. Younger,” she grunted, finally, “I miss her but she-“ She broke off, then shrugged, “She’s cool. It doesn’t bother her, she just wants me to be happy and all that sappy shit...” she trailed off, scuffing her toe against the ground.

This time, Molly judged, she wasn’t lying. She was still hiding something from them but...This time he had no desire press her.

“So, what about you?” Beau demanded, turning to Fjord with an almost alarmingly rapid rise in the volume of her voice as she very pointedly shifted the focus to the half-orc.

Fjord sighed, “I’ve got siblings. One brother, he’s a few years younger than me, and six sisters, some older, some younger, I’m kind of in the middle.”

Nott made a small choking noise from her perch atop the unfortunate horse. “Your parents had _eight_ children?” She squawked, looking horrified at the very idea.

“Yup,” Fjord said, shrugging his shoulders, “It wasn’t that bad. Two of my sisters ended up as captains, and I ended up getting my first job on one of their ships before I worked my way up.”

“Hold on,” Beau interjected, goggling at Fjord, “You said your _sisters_ were captains?”

“Sure,” Fjord replied easily. He frowned down at Beau as she continued to goggle at him, as though he’d announced his sisters each had three heads and twelve arms. “You know,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially to Beau, “It’s only really humans that bother about that shit. Half-orcs, not so much.”

“Tieflings don’t either!” Jester chimed in.

“In my experience, tieflings can take or leave gender as they see fit,” Molly supplied mildly, “It’s definitely a human thing.”

Jester nodded her agreement. “ _Definitely_.”

“Definitely,” Nott agreed, surprising them all by chipping in to the conversation.

“Humans have many things other races do not,” Caleb added, “And a lot of them are very stupid and unnecessary.”

Molly smiled over at the wizard, “Excellently put,” he said, with the smile he gave the wizard whenever he wanted to see him blush.

“Don’t tease him,” Jester chided him in Infernal, lightly slapping his shoulder.

Molly’s grin broadened, “I wasn’t teasing, my dear, I was being honest.” he replied in the same language, “But he _does_ turn a delightful red colour when you get him flustered, don’t you think?”

“Well you shouldn’t fluster him,” she said, “It’s not nice.”

He snorted at the irony of that, but decided not to comment on it.

Caleb, still slightly pink, turned to Fjord, cleared his throat and said, “So you’re father was a sailor, too. What about your mother?”

Fjord smiled at that, “She was a blacksmith,”  he informed them all. Even Jester looked up in interest at this. Apparently it hadn’t yet come up in her travels with the half-orc. “Yup, that’s how she and my father met, see. He was also trained to protect the ships, as well as sail them.  He went to her for weapons when they stopped in Port Damali one day. Said he fell in love the moment he set eyes on her.”

Jester ‘awwww’d’ loudly at this, while Beau mimed vomiting into the grass at the side of the road, making Molly snort in amusement.

“Was she very beautiful?” Jester asked excitedly, apparently not noticing either Molly or Beau’s reaction to this.

“Still is,” Fjord said with a soft smile.

Jester’s grin turned positively wicked and she leaned out of the wagon slightly to say, eyebrows waggling suggestively, “Maybe that’s where you get your good looks, hm?”

Fjord promptly blushed at that, which only made Jester look more pleased.

“You shouldn’t fluster people, it’s not nice,” Molly said in Infernal, imitating Jester’s voice.

She tugged on one of his horns irritably and he smirked some more, so she did it again. Then she peered up at Fjord and said, still in Infernal, “ _He_ turns a very amusing colour too, though.”

“That he does,” Molly replied, lazily casting another glance in Fjord’s direction.

He raised his tail and Jester slapped hers against it, both of them smiling.

“I still haven’t gotten used to that,” Nott said, eyeing Molly’s tail as he flicked it idly from side to side.

“That we have tails?” Jester asked, cocking her head and frowning.

Nott nodded.

“Ah, but there are so many uses for them,” Molly said, lightly smacking Fjord’s ass as he moved around the cart to walk beside Caleb. He flushed again and Jester grinned.

Nott giggled, looking eager, “What else?” she asked, eyes shining with interest.

Molly smiled and shifted slightly, dangling his tail over the side of the wagon and knocking on it to get Frumpkin’s attention. Caleb’s familiar, now restored to cat form much to the wizard’s delight, trotted over and immediately began batting at the tip of Molly’s tail as he jerked it out of reach.

Nott laughed even harder, leaning around the edge of the horse to watch.

“Careful,” Caleb warned, though he too was smiling, “His claws are sharp.”

He wasn’t wrong. Molly was just a little too slow and Frumpkin’s claws tore through the delicate skin. With a soft hiss of pain he tugged it back up into the cart.

“Sorry,” Caleb said, frowning apologetically as Frumpkin continued to look around for the source of his entertainment.

“Not at all, I was asking for it,” Molly replied mildly, smiling.

“I’m the cleric!” Jester shrieked, “Let me see it! I will tend to your wounds.”

“I really don’t think it needs-“ Molly began, but Jester had already seized his tail and yanked it up to her eyes to inspect it.

“Poor tail,” she said, prodding at the thin slashes. She pressed a soft kiss to it and then released him, “All better,” she announced.

“All better indeed,” he agreed, leaning forwards and pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, “Thank you, sweetling.”

Jester beamed at him.

“What about you, Jester?” Nott asked, who had now turned right around on the horse’s back, facing the two of them in the cart.

Molly returned his head to Jester’s lap and allowed her to keep playing with his hair as Beau said, “Yeah. You got twelve siblings stashed up in Nicodranas somewhere?”

Jester laughed at that, “Definitely not,” she replied, “I am an only child,” she announced, smiling, apparently satisfied by this.

“Figures,” Fjord muttered under his breath.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded, glowering at the tall half-orc, hands planted on her hips.

“You’re just a very singular individual, darling, couldn’t picture it any other way,” he replied, smoothly.

Jester considered this for a long moment, a faint crease between her brows. Then she beamed and settled herself back down in the wagon, looking rather pleased and proud. “Quite right,” she nodded.

“Your father isn’t at home though, is he?” Molly said, craning his head back in her lap to squint up at her, “The first day we met I remember you asking me about him,” he spread the cards in a fan and waved them under her nose to underline his point.

“I did ask you!” she said, looking excited he remembered. “The truth is I have never met him, or-“ she broke off, frowning slightly, “I did when I was very, very small, my mother said But I don’t remember, so it doesn’t count.”

“Reasonable,” Molly agreed.

“He left my mother when I was very young. But she wouldn’t tell me why. Or where he went. Or what he was like.”

“So what?” Beau said incredulously, snorting, “You figured you’d just traipse up and down all of Wildemount until you found out for yourself?”

“Yes,” Jester said, composedly.

“Oh,” Beau said, apparently taken aback by this matter-of-fact reply, “Well...Good luck with that,” she finally managed to get out, obviously at a complete loss for how to respond to Jester.

Molly had noticed that a lot of people seemed to have that reaction to her. And what was more, she seemed to like it.

“Thank you, Beau,” Jester said, composedly.

“So, what’s your mother like?” Fjord asked conversationally.

“She’s a wonderful woman,” Jester said, nodding sagely, “A  blue tiefling, just like me, and very, _very_ beautiful.  The most beautiful woman in all the world.”

“You can’t technically say that, though,” Caleb said, frowning, “Because you haven’t seen every woman in the world to know that-“ He caught the ‘stop talking now’ look that Fjord was giving him and broke off, but too late.

“No!” Jester declared, “She _is_ the most beautiful woman in all the world. Lots and lots of people say it. People come from all over the world to see her and be kissed by her.”

“Be kissed by her?” Nott repeated, eyes wide.

Jester nodded, “Yes. She was blessed by the Traveler, you see, to be so beautiful that people will come from far and wide to see her. And she’s magical, too. If you’re kissed by her, you’re destined to meet your soulmate.”

Everyone took a long moment to digest this but really, Molly thought, given the way Jester was, that story could have been a lot more shocking.

“So, if they’re destined to meet their soulmate from a kiss...What wondrous thing happens if they _sleep_ with her, then?” he asked her in Infernal, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

“Me,” Jester replied primly.

He choked on his mint leaves.

Jester patted him on the back, grinning. Then she turned her attention to Nott, “What about you, Nott?” she trilled.

The little goblin girl gave a small shudder. “Oh, my family were dreadful. Definitely not magical at all,” she said, shaking her head so hard her large ears flapped emphatically. “And I certainly don’t want to find them on this trip.”

“You ran away from them, then?” Fjord asked, the big man’s voice surprisingly gentle.

Nott nodded firmly. “Oh yes. But I...I may have...Taken a few things before I left.”

“A few things?” Fjord repeated, “What kinds of things?”

“Gold things,” Nott said, wringing her hands in her lap as though expecting them to be angry with her. “Lots of gold things.” She paused a moment, then amended, “Actually _all_ of them.”

“All of them?” Molly repeated, eyebrows raised as he peered upside down at Nott.

She nodded and then confessed in a rush, “I stole all of the gold that my clan king had before I ran away.”

A long moment of silence followed this pronouncement. Then both Beau and Molly burst out laughing at the same moment.

“Good for you, kid,” Beau said, smiling and giving Nott a gentle tap on the shoulder with the end of her staff.

Nott smiled around at them all rather sheepishly, but looked pleased with herself all the same.

“Caleb,” she said, turning to the wizard walking along absently beside the horse, for once actually paying attention to the conversation and not one of his many books. “Do you want to share anything?”

Caleb looked around at everyone watching him, cleared his throat and said, “You have been my only family for a little while, now,” to Nott who smiled a little sadly and patted him on the shoulder. “My mother still lives in Zemni,” he admitted, “But I haven’t seen her in some time. She’s a bookmaker.”

“You continue to find new and amusing ways of shocking me each and every day that we travel together, Caleb,” Molly said, sardonically.

“What about your father?” Fjord asked, the group as a whole ignoring Molly’s comment.

“My father died when I was a teenager,” Caleb admitted, not looking too sorry about this. “He was not a very nice man, and he did not like magic. After he died, my mother took care of me, and found books so that I could study some more. When I was ready, she encouraged me to leave and travel, learn more.”

“Any siblings?” Beau asked.

“I had a sister,” Caleb said, very quietly, “But she...She died. She, she was always rather frail and she grew ill one Winter. She did not get better.”

Nott gently patted Caleb’s arm and he smiled, squeezing her hand in answer.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Fjord said quietly.

“It was a very long time ago,” Caleb replied, mechanically.

Molly frowned slightly. There was something...Off about his story. Not by much, but Molly had gotten very good at reading people during his time at the carnival. It had been essential to picking the correct marks with his tarot readings, and responding properly to their reactions.

He didn’t have time to question the wizard, however, because a moment later Jester flicked one of his horns to get his attention and he looked up at her instead.

“I haven’t forgotten about you, Mollymauk,” she sang, prodding him in the side with the tip of her finger, making him squirm away from her.  Perhaps the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life was letting Jester see how damned ticklish he was.

“There are a lot of things about me that are hard to forget, sweetheart,” Molly said with a lazy grin, “You’ll have to be more specific.” he said, more focused on batting her evilly wiggling fingers away from him than on the conversation.

“Your family,” she said, blinking down at him, “Everyone else has said things, but not you.”

“Well that’s simple,” he said with an easy smile, “You’ve already met my family.”

Jester frowned down at him, her nose scrunching rather adorably as she did so, “No we haven’t. I would definitely have noticed if we had ran into a flock of lavender coloured tieflings in fancy coats,” she plucked at the silk coat he was sprawled in.

Molly just smiled up at her, “You did meet them. Orna, and Toya, and Gustav. Have you forgotten already? It wasn’t _that_ long ago, surely. Too many doughnuts, I think, they’re rotting your brain.”

“My brain is _not_ rotten,” Jester declared, “It’s the most unrotten thing in the world!”

“Quite right,” Molly agreed, patting her hand.  

“But they weren’t your _family_ family,” Jester said, “They weren’t tieflings.”

“Your powers of perception never fail to astound me,” Molly replied. Jester jabbed him irritably with the tip of her tail. “You’re right, they weren’t tieflings, but they _were_ my family,” he said, hoping that would be enough to stop the flood of questions that were causing an uncomfortable prickle of cold dread to slide down his spine. “All of them. And Yasha, of course.”

“But what about your _family_ family,” Jester persisted, “The other lavender tieflings of the world, you know. We want to hear all about them!”

He tensed slightly, drawing his head out of her lap and sitting up, spine stiff, at the same time Beau said, “Yeah, c’mon Tealeaf, everyone else shared. Take your turn.”

“I bet your mother was _really,_ really pretty,” Jester continued to prattle, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this was the last thing he wanted to discuss.

“Leave it, Jester,” he said, his voice quiet and strained, but he wasn’t sure that she heard.

“Did she have tattoos as well? Or is that more a ‘you’ thing? Oh! Did she make your cloak for you?” she continued.

The rest of the group had fallen a little more quiet now, perhaps sensing the tension that seemed particularly tight around his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs, making it painful to breathe, crushing his heart.

“Stop it,” Molly whispered, staring straight ahead, that cold dread that had been snaking its way up his spine snapping taut like a whip, stinging at his raw nerves.

He clenched his hands in his lap to stop the trembling, but it didn’t do any good.

“What about siblings, then?” Jester persisted, head cocked to one side, voice now alive with curiosity, “A little sister, maybe? You would be a good older brother, I think, you-“

“Shut up!” he barked, silencing her at last as he turned on her, red eyes flashing, fangs instinctively bared. “How about you mind your own damned business for once in your life,” he snapped at her.

Jester’s eyes had gone wide, her mouth slightly open. She didn’t say anything, but she stared at him as though he was her once beloved pet suddenly turned savage.

There was a tight lump in his throat and he could already feel the guilt creeping into him, smothering the flare of anger that he was still struggling to place.

All the same, he shoved himself out of the wagon, unable to take the stares of the others, shoved his hands into his pockets and muttered, “I’m going to walk awhile. Someone else can take a turn.”

Without another word he sped up to walk ahead of their little convoy. The wagon didn’t move fast, with their sad, solitary horse to pull it, and it didn’t take much effort to get clear ahead of them, out of range of their whispered comments about his behaviour, their prying eyes, and above all, the hurt on Jester’s face.

************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Much love. Much happiness. Comments will fuel updates! If you want more just...Drop me a line and let me know if you liked this one. Maybe? If you have a second??? Ta.


	3. Infernal Mending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly cools off after the uncomfortable moment with Jester, and gets help from an unexpected source that advises him on how to put things right.

Without another word he sped up to walk ahead of their little convoy. The wagon didn’t move fast, with their sad, solitary horse to pull it, and it didn’t take much effort to get clear ahead of them, out of range of their whispered comments about his behaviour, their prying eyes, and above all, the hurt on Jester’s face.

An empty pit inside him had opened up and threatened to swallow him whole. He shouldn’t have snapped at Jester like that, he _hated_ himself for snapping at Jester like that but...He had done so well at pretending he had started to deceive himself, had started to believe that he might actually be a whole person, who didn’t need anything but the last two years he could remember to cobble together a sense of self.

Yet listening to them all talking, hearing how their families, their upbringings, however had or good, had shaped them, driven them, given them purpose, given them _identity_ , had made him realise how hollow he was by comparison.

Molly put on a front, that wasn’t exactly a secret. But usually when people acted the way that he did they had things to hide. They had secrets. They had something or someone they were trying to conceal. He had nothing. He was nothing. Nothing and no-one.

The front had been enough for so long. The pretence, the lies, the bullshit he spouted whenever anyone asked him a difficult question about where he had come from or why he was like this. Most of them had known it was bullshit but that hadn’t really mattered. All that had mattered was that he had said _something_ , he had found some lie, some story, something that he could hold on to and pretend with.

It had all slipped away when they had started to talk of family. That hadn’t been as much of a problem in the carnival. Everyone had been there to either run from something, hide from something, or pretend to be something else. No-one had pried into the others’ pasts, and there had been few questions about family. It had been commonly accepted that they were each others’ family now, and that that had happened for a reason.

He covered his face with his hands and groaned softly. Why hadn’t he just been able to lie? Why hadn’t he just  been able to tell them all that his mother was a famous musician with so much talent that kings begged her to play at their court, and that was why he could sing so well himself? His father had been an incredible painter, and was the source of his own small creative prowess? Why hadn’t he been able to invent a younger sister with lavender skin and big black eyes who he sang lullabies to, just to please Jester? Why had he gone to pieces like that?

Why, why, _why_?

Nothing made any fucking sense. Nothing had made any fucking sense since the day he’d woken up in a puddle of filth and rain at the side of the road and been taken in by the carnival that had happened past him and pulled him out of death’s embrace that had been closing so sweetly around him.

In that moment he was close to wishing, as he had in those early days, that they had left him there to die. Nameless. Storyless. Forgotten. It was kinder than this. Kinder than pretending that he hadn’t died that day. Kinder than allowing this shambling wreck with no sense of self or purpose to continue existing in the world and call it living.

On some strange instinct, he pulled at the fine gold chain around his neck and pulled the heavy locket up from where it had been resting, warm from the heat of his body, just over his heart.

He turned it over and over in his fingers, his calluses scraping on the edges of the fine engravings that patterned it. He clicked the latch and opened it, staring down once more into the eyes that had been haunting his dreams since Yasha had given it to him in the Feed and Mead tavern a few weeks earlier.

One of the doors was empty. In the other was a thick piece of paper, painted over with a clear liquid that reminded him of a pottery glaze in order to preserve the image below. It depicted a tiefling woman. Her horns extended straight up above her head, like a ram’s, spiralling slightly at the tips. Her skin was a deep blue, darker than Jester’s, but she had red eyes, like his. Above the top of her head, in blood red ink, were four numbers: 3010.

He had no idea who she was. But she had been important enough to him, at some point in his life, to keep safe in this locket that he had still been carrying when the carnival had found him. And she had begun to creep into his dreams, already dark and twisted, that woke him before dawn most days, shaking and sweating, clutching at the details of the demons his mind danced with at night, at the possible insight they might give him into his past. But he still had no idea who she was. His mother, perhaps, when she had been younger? Or maybe a sister, as Jester had suggested. Or a friend. A partner?

It seemed his search for answers about himself was only giving him more and more questions, adding to the already extensive list of things he didn’t know. It was exhausting and infuriating, and never more present to him than when the others had so poignantly reminded him of the life he didn’t have.

He was like a ghost walking among them. Not part of their world, but not able to move on or find peace either. Lost. Adrift. A soul condemned to wander on this plane for the rest of eternity, searching for those who may once have loved it.

It was a lonely, cold, isolating thing, and as the last vestiges of whatever it was that had made him snap at Jester faded away, he realised it had settled firmly in his chest, in the place where his heart might once have been.

He walked. And walked. And walked. Until his feet protested and his calves felt as though someone had applied thumb screws to his tendons. The sun had set below the horizon and the cold wind tugged at his coat before he realised it was time to stop.

Glancing over his shoulder, he scanned the horizon for some sign of his party and, after a moment, he spotted a rising column of smoke from a fire. He made towards it, vaguely hoping it was his friends, and not another random band of travellers. Though if it was, he assured himself dully, they might yet be more willing to take him in than his group would.

Once his self-pitying thoughts about his past had elapsed, which admittedly had taken some time, his thoughts had turned instead to how he had snapped at Jester. Thinking about it now caused him to wince, not least because of the way the others would react. Shouting at Jester was like kicking a puppy. It was, above all, an inexcusable crime that served no-one and left the world a little darker than it had been before.

After almost twenty minutes of walking, he crested a small rise, and came upon their poor horse which was grazing absently on the thick tufts of grass around it, swishing its tail back and forth to ward off the flies.

“Hello there dinner,” he murmured quietly, stepping forwards and allowing the horse to nuzzle at his hands. He’d gotten into the habit of feeding it a sugar lump a time or two while he’d travelled with it in the circus and the thing now assumed that every time he approached it, it was going to get sugar from him. He had gotten into the habit of calling it ‘dinner’ a few days ago, because it made Jester squawk indignantly every time he did so.

“Go back to your grass, friend,” Molly told it quietly, “I haven’t got anything for you I’m afraid.”

The temptation to remain beside the horse and not move any closer to the small fire they had managed to get going was extremely tempting, but he didn’t need to add ‘coward’ to his long list of flaws of today.

So he strolled into camp as casually as he could and announced to the people gathered there, “The road ahead is clear. No dangers.”

There was a long, agonizing silence as they all slowly looked up at him. Finally, after letting him stew in his own discomfort for a lot longer, Beau broke it.

“And how the hell were we supposed to know there was danger or not?” she demanded, screwing up her face in that frown of distaste she reserved _just_ for him, “Seeing as how you didn’t bother coming back to us for six hours, by which time we’d already stopped.”

“Well,” Molly said, chewing on that for a moment as he swaned closer to the fire, suddenly realising how cold he was, “If something dangerous had attacked and killed me, my lifeless body at the side of the road would probably have been a good indication for you all to stop, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, stop and give whatever finally did you in a fucking medal,” Beau muttered under her breath, turning her attention back to the chopping board balanced precariously across her knees where she was helping Fjord with dinner.

Molly stepped forward to help too, feeling pity for the poor roots Beau was currently mangling, but Fjord told him in a voice that was curt but civil, that he didn’t need any help. After almost five minutes drifting around the camp trying to find something to do with himself, he felt a tug on the hem of his cloak and looked down to see Nott there.

“Yes?” he said, arching an eyebrow at her.

“The horse has a stone in one of his shoes, we think,” the little goblin girl informed him in a soft voice, “But he won’t let any of us close enough to look, he just kicks. Maybe, maybe you could fix that?”

“Of course,” Molly said, thinking that getting kicked in the face by a grumpy, overworked horse was entirely more enjoyable than the alternative.

“And,” Nott whispered, dropping her voice even further and glancing around, as though afraid to be seen talking to him, “You should give her some flowers.”

“Who?” Molly said, bewildered.

“Jester,” Nott said, as though this was obvious and, in hindsight, it probably should have been. She shuffled her feet and explained, clearly thinking him to be incredibly dense, which perhaps he was, “She likes flowers. It can be how you say sorry.”

He sauntered back to Winter’s Crest, still placidly chomping on the grass, and set about examining his feet. The horse didn’t think much of this, and did indeed kick, but a few soft words and touches were enough to calm him so that Molly could actually help the silly beast. He stood beside it a while longer, chewing on his mint leaves, pondering Nott’s words to him before deciding that it almost definitely couldn’t make the situation worse.

He was thankful for his darkvision as he scoured the nearby bushes and grasses for some likely looking flowers. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any around save a few half-wilted dandelions. As far as apologies went, they would probably make the situation worse.

In the end he got hold of a stick around as broad as his thumb, and roughly the length of his forearm, plopped himself down on the grass next to WC, who spared him half a glance in between his grass-chomping, and began whittling it.

Half an hour later, he had what he hoped would suffice as a fairly reasonable apology gift and approached the camp again.

Jester was being kept well aware from the food, as they had all learned the hard way was essential to avoiding food poisoning on this trip together, and drawing furiously in her sketchpad. He wondered briefly if it would depict him headless, along with a prayer to the Traveller for something nasty to find and kill him the next day, but he didn’t really think Jester had a truly vindictive bone in her body.

He had barely opened his mouth when Fjord and Beau seemed to coalesce from the darkness on either side of Jester, both standing straight, arms folded, glaring at him like bodyguards.

Frowning, he opened his mouth to say something that would either make Fjord laugh or Beau punch him, when Jester interrupted, “It’s alright, it’s alright. You don’t have to _protect_ me from him,” she said, rolling her eyes as though she found her companions completely ridiculous. Molly felt his heart lighten for just a second, thinking that maybe she wasn’t as hurt as he’d feared. Then she added firmly, “I can do that myself.”

Beau and Fjord did at least move aside, though Beau continued to frown suspiciously at him even as she did so, and neither of them went far. Molly tried to ignore them as he focused on Jester.  

“I have something for you,” he said quietly to her.

“What is it?” she asked, looking curious, her voice perking up apparently in spite of herself.

“An apology,” he said, frankly, then withdrew the thing he had carved from her and handed it out to her, “Nott suggested flowers, but I couldn’t find any. And besides, I think you’ll like this better.”

“Better than flowers?” she said, suspiciously, “Is it a doughnut?”

He laughed a little at that, “Unfortunately not. If I’d passed a bakery in the middle of a field I’d have been sure to get something for you.  This is the best I could manage with what I had available to me.”

She took it from him and raised an eyebrow, obviously unimpressed. “It’s a stick,” she informed him, “Definitely not better than flowers. This one isn’t even on fire,” she glanced around him to where their fire was currently consuming many sticks.

“Take a closer look,” he urged her, afraid she was going to impulsively set it alight just to declare it better than a simple stick.

Frowning, she peered down at it for almost a full minute before she declared, “It’s a stick with holes in it. Probably better than just a stick, but not better than flowers.”

Sighing a little in spite of himself, Molly held out a hand, “May I?” he asked her.

She handed him back the roughly carved flute, now looking slightly suspicious, as though afraid he was teasing her. Beau and Fjord were both watching him now, and Nott was peering from around Caleb’s legs at him. Their eyes on him, he blew gently and played a soft few notes.

Jester clapped her hands together in delight while at the same time he was almost certain he heard Fjord give a soft groan. Like Molly, he was probably fully aware that this gift meant they’d never have another peaceful moment on the road.

“It sounds just like an owl!” Jester said excitedly, snatching it from him and blowing it herself. The note she made was a little more cracked than his had been, since she hadn’t quite perfected the art of not doing something to the fullest extent that she possibly could, but she looked very pleased with herself all the same. “You were right, this is _definitely_ better than flowers,” she informed him.

“I’m glad you’re pleased,” Molly said, bowing to her, “I’ll teach how you to play some songs on it tomorrow,” for the sake of all of their ears, he hoped she picked it up quickly.

He opened his mouth to continue, but Beau interrupted, “Is that it, then?” she demanded, shifting protectively a little closer towards Jester, arms folded.

“No,” Molly scowled, “It’s not.” With that, he turned firmly away from her and said to Jester in Infernal, “Can I have a word? Just the two of us?”

She studied him for a long moment, then she said, “Yes, alright,” in Common, set down her sketchbook, and got to her feet.

She took his hand and promptly began to lead him away from the confused Beau and Fjord.

“Jes?” Fjord said, a question in his voice.

“We’re not going to have sex with each other, “ Jester informed Fjord placidly, while Beau choked, “Don’t worry,” she patted his arm in an apparently reassuring way then, with surprising strength, tugged Molly deeper into the darkness.

She seemed to have a destination in mind, and he didn’t protest as she dragged him into the shelter of an old oak tree and plopped down, patting the grass beside her in invitation. He accepted it, and joined her on the ground.

Before he could say anything she spoke, examining the roughly carved flute in her hands. “Where did you get this?”

“I made it,” he replied, in Infernal.

She cocked an eyebrow at him, “Really?” she said in the same language.

He nodded, “Really really.”

She studied him for a long moment, apparently trying to decide if he was teasing her, then said, “I didn’t know you could make things like this.”

He smirked at her, “I’m a man of many talents and mysteries, my dear.” She continued to watch him and after a long moment he shrugged and said, “Yasha taught me how to do it, while we were travelling together. Something to keep my hands busy, she said.” He had needed that, back in those days, just to keep him from climbing the walls or clawing off his own skin in frustration. “She’s much better than me, the things she can make are incredible. But don’t ask her directly about it.”

Jester cocked her head, curious, “Why not?” she asked.

Molly smiled thinly, “She’s self-conscious about it,” he said, “Doesn’t like attention being drawn to her. She’d probably butcher me right here and now if she knew I’d even told you this much.” He wasn’t sure how much of an exaggeration that was. It probably depended on Yasha’s mood in the moment she found out. “Although,” he added wryly, “I suppose you might not object to that.”

Jester considered him for a moment, then she said, “I would.” There was such a sweet sincerity to her words that he felt yet another stab of guilt for having snapped at her before. “You were a bit of a dick,” she admitted, “But I wouldn’t want her to hurt you.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he told her, quietly, “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“No,” Jester agreed, with that characteristic candid bluntness of hers, “You shouldn’t have.”

Without really noticing what he was doing he started pulling up long blades of grass with his fingers and absently weaving them together. Jester watched him for a long moment. Finally, he said, his voice soft, “It’s nice to have someone to speak Infernal with again.” That seemed to catch her off-guard and she just blinked at him, “Haven’t you missed it?” he asked her.

“Not really,” she said slowly, “But I haven’t been travelling for as long as you have.” She considered for another moment, then, “And it _is_ nice to have another tiefling to talk to. Fjord is very nice, but for a sailor he’s very bad with languages. He doesn’t even know the fun stuff like the curse words!”

Molly laughed at that, “I take it you’ve already solved that problem?” he said.

“Of course I have,” Jester replied, looking mildly offended that he’d even felt the need to ask. “He now knows how to say all the important things.”

Molly smiled, “I’m glad to hear that.”

He was silent for a log moment, staring up into the velvety black sky that blanketed the world. They were far enough away from any cities that he could see stars stretching out in endless clusters before him, like handfuls of diamonds tossed across the sky by the hand of a careless god.

Yasha had told him once of the strange beliefs of her people with regards to the stars. They believed that the entire sky was actually only stars, and nothing else. The black patches were not the sky, they were simply stars that had not been given souls yet.

He had questioned her on what that had meant, and she had solemnly told him that every star he saw in the sky corresponded to a departed soul. When a loved one died, she had claimed, their soul was carried into the sky, and drifted into one of the empty, waiting, black stars, illuminating it.

Shooting stars were the last farewell of a soul as it left the world as they knew it and was carried into the sky to take its rightful place. Her people believed that some day, when the sentient races had completed their quest in this world, that the last thing the gods would see was the sky was it should be, an oasis of rippling light, every dark, empty star filled, and that the world would then ended.

As he stared up above them he wondered if his family were up there, watching him, or if their stars, like his, were dark. He wondered if the woman from the locket was there, too...

“Mollymauk,” Jester said after a long moment, interrupting him.

“Mm?” He started, looking down at her.

“I’m not sure how to tell you this,” Jester said in Infernal, gently patting his hand, “But this is a really shit apology.”

He barked out a laugh at that, “It is,” he agreed, then dragged a hand through his hair. His fingers caught on the tiny braids Jester had been weaving into it that morning, which he had forgotten about until now. “I haven’t had to apologise to people too often,” he explained, with a broad, lazy smile, “It’s one of the many burdens of being as perfect as I am-“ he broke off, snickering, as Jester playfully shoved at him.

He sobered up a moment later, gazing up at the stars once more, his throat growing tight. “The truth-“ he faltered, swallowed hard, and forced himself to try again, “The truth is, Jester, that I wasn’t really trying to apologise there. I was trying to explain.”

Jester’s brow furrowed in answer to that, “Explain?” She repeated, confused, “By telling me about Infernal?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice growing suddenly hoarse, thick with an emotion that he couldn’t place that welled up from his chest and threatened to drown him for a moment. He swallowed it back down and forced himself to continue, though he didn’t look at her now. “Before you I hadn’t spoken Infernal in a very long time. I had no-one to speak it to. No-one in the carnival knew it, and I almost thought it had left me, too, until I saw you again.”

 Jester stayed uncharacteristically quiet and still, as though she had been frozen, watching him silently.

With a ragged, shuddering breath, he looked up at her again and said, “My family are gone, Jester.” The words were true enough. Whether the interpretation she chose to place upon them was also true was another matter entirely, but not one he cared to dwell upon at the moment. “All of them. There’s nothing left of them. And so...So it was nice to have someone speak Infernal with me again.”

She reached out slowly and took his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. At the same time, she tangled her tail with his, a common sign of intimacy and affection that he had also not experienced...For as long as he could remember. Yet it felt right. He smiled, a little shakily it was true, but he smiled.

“I know it’s not an excuse,” he continued, “But that was why I snapped at you before.”

“It must be painful to think about,” she said quietly.

He swallowed, “It is,” he admitted, and for some reason, it felt good to say that, to acknowledge that there was this wound in him, this hollowed out scar, capable of hurting him still, even if he couldn’t recall the wound itself.

“Then I’m sorry I pushed you so hard to talk about it,” Jester said, resting her head comfortably on his shoulder and putting her arm around him. She was by far the most comfortable of their group with casual physical affection, something he was glad of.

“I’ll forgive you if you forgive me,” he promised her, turning to the side and kissing the top of her head.

She was quiet for a long time, allowing them to settle in the peaceful silence. Then she said abruptly, “Deal,” and got to her feet without warning.

Molly blinked, a little thrown by this sudden turn of events, even more so when she swooped down and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “I forgive you, Molly,” she said, and he felt a soft warmth spread through him at her words. “And to prove how much I forgive you, I’m going to go back to camp and tell Nott not to put beetles in your dinner after all.” With that, she skipped off.

“Wait, what?” Molly shouted after her, her words only just hitting him as he scrambled to his feet and chased after her.

*********************

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and joining me in the Molly angst pit we all know is his backstory. I do have plans for the rest of this fic which will delve into my headcanon for his backstory/the reason for his memory loss. But as per, please let me know if you liked this one!!


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